Willow News-EU, Sequels, everything

I started this thread in the SW In-Depth forum to talk about Moebius's Willow concept art and how it influenced The Phantom Menace: Moebius's Willow and TPM

However, it's kind of evolved into me analyzing the concept art itself, and talking about how it suggests the considerable influence of The Lord of the Rings on Lucas's work (including SW, but Willow in particular).

ATMachine - I'll leave that thread over in Saga for now, as there'll be more traffic than here in LFL, but will move over here if there's no further SW-related discussion about the topic. There's enough in there to keep it relevant so far.

If it gets moved, I'll attach a permanent redirect in Saga (which will eventually get bumped down the page), rather than the usual 24 hours, I'd like to keep the thread going.

I watched it on Blu-Ray the other night, it still brings a smile to my face. Now that Disney owns it, they definitely need to get sequels happening and expand on the original movie. This is now their LotR's and could be huge if done right.

Well, it's their Hobbit at least. They could expand upon it and create a grand mythos of course, but I wonder if the thought really appeals to them.
Maybe, once the Hobbit hype has died down, they'll feel secure in going medieval.

Wasn't there a book duology that followed after the movie? I know that there has been a huge (and I mean HUGE) push for more prequel/sequel books for The Dark Crystal. I have read those and they are quite good, and so is Willow- and I would like to see Disney take this seriously and expand that universe and maybe let Neil Gaiman have at it. The whole thing is right up his alley, in my opinion.

I read one of the books written as a sequel to Willow and was not impressed. Dark Moon, I think? It was set years later, characters had "grown" so much they were different people, and some favorites had apparently died offscreen for no apparent reason. If an author wants to change things that much, why don't they just write their own story?

I might of mentioned this earlier but if Willow was a huge hit then a break even film we may of never of gotten the PT.

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How so?

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Willow (1) came out in 88. If it was big and if GL treated like SW, that would mean a Willow movie every 3 years. GL started working on the PT circa 92. Willow 2, 3, 4 and so on would of delayed or even stopped the PT.

I might of mentioned this earlier but if Willow was a huge hit then a break even film we may of never of gotten the PT.

Click to expand...

How so?

Click to expand...

Willow (1) came out in 88. If it was big and if GL treated like SW, that would mean a Willow movie every 3 years. GL started working on the PT circa 92. Willow 2, 3, 4 and so on would of delayed or even stopped the PT.

Click to expand...

Okay, I see how that would work. Willow came out when I was four so, and since it wasn't SW, I guess GL didn't think it was worth investing in.

God, I hope not. The original was bad enough (I always find it amazing that pretty much everyone forgets that George Lucas has been making terrible movies on a pretty consistent basis well before 1999).

And it’s your subjective opinion that it never happened. But if you wanna argue that HOWARD THE DUCK is a cinematic masterpiece, good luck with that one. I’m sure you’ll have no problem fitting the amount of people who believe that into a VW Beetle.

I love Willow. Captures the fun of ANH while also feeling "gritty" and lived-in in a way I seriously doubt any Disney Wars will match. Great score, excellent action, Joanne Whalley ...Willow deserved about three sequels at least.

I love Willow. Captures the fun of ANH while also feeling "gritty" and lived-in in a way I seriously doubt any Disney Wars will match. Great score, excellent action, Joanne Whalley ...Willow deserved about three sequels at least.

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I was actually really excited for WILLOW back when it came out. We were promised that it would do for fantasy what STAR WARS did for science fiction (OK, STAR WARS isn’t really sci-fi, but since it’s often categorized as such, let’s just go with it for right now). This was back when the only good live action epic fantasy films on the market were CONAN THE BARBARIAN, EXCALIBUR and DRAGONSLAYER…all good films, mind you, but I don’t consider any of them to be great. The fact is that most fantasy films back then were complete and total garbage, and not really taken very seriously by audiences or critics, so I was hoping WILLOW might legitimize the genre. I saw it opening weekend and absolutely despised it. Maybe I’d like it more if I watched it again, but I just really don’t feel like it. We’d have to wait another dozen years until Peter Jackson came along and finally did what WILLOW had promised to do with THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING.

Well I first saw Willow as a kid so I cared nothing about the genre being "legitimized." I just cared that I loved the story and characters, and was instantly drawn into the world. I even liked it better than Star Wars in that the film did more to stir my imagination while also feeling more "real" than the world of Luke and company.

So admittedly there is a nostalgia factor looking back on it as an adult, but beyond that I think it's still a great example of epic fantasy on screen. I love what Jackson did with LOTR (and I even like the Hobbit movies), but even so those movies feel like such an investment just to watch given Jackson's ponderous style of conveying emotion. I think there's something to be said for how much Willow manages to do in a more compact form.

Plus with grittier fantasy gaining the mainstream with the Ice and Fire series I find I have a rediscovered affection for the classic quest type of fantasy. Willow's great in this respect.